In terms of unlikely comebacks, you would do well to find one less plausible this year, if indeed ever. A mere 17 years and nine months after their debut album We Didn’t Say That! thundered into the charts at No 140, Daphne & Celeste are releasing the followup.

We knew we kept some fans but it’s fair to say it worked out better than we thought it would, or even dreamed it would

Celeste

The hiatus between their debut album and newie Daphne & Celeste Save the World is more than three times the length of the wait for the Stone Roses’ Second Coming (“Is that a world record?” Celeste asks. “We really ought to have someone find out”) as the pair returned to acting on, and writing for, TV and stage. Eagle-eyed viewers will have been able to spot Celeste in an episode of 30 Rock, for example, playing the love interest in a telenovela that stars a South American Jack Donaghy doppelganger.

In 2015, they suddenly re-emerged with the single You and I Alone, their first collaboration with UK electronica artist Max Tundra, whose remix credits include Mogwai, Pet Shop Boys, the Strokes, Futureheads and Mint Royale and who wrote … Save the World. A reasonably straightforward electro-funk love song, You and I Alone gives absolutely no indication as to the berserk oddness of their new album, which veers from the pummelling dirty beats of second single BB, their broadside against homogenous boys-with-guitars, which may be the only pop single to work the word “heteronormative” into its lyrics, to the jarringly baroque Song to a Succulent. Throwaway bubblegum, this isn’t.

I talk briefly to Celeste after she has returned to the US with a stinking post-tour cold. She is effusive about the gigs, which were attended by both old fans (literally old, in many cases), and curious newcomers; indeed, one person I know who saw them in Brighton was seven months old when Ooh Stick You came out. Buoyed by the sheer unlikeliness of their return, the duo’s concerts are suitably celebratory and loopy affairs involving bubble machines and onstage construction of balloon animals.

“The reaction is a bit of a mystery,” says Celeste, “but it’s why we wanted to do it. We knew we kept some fans, so we figured if we could just give everyone a break for the night, it would be good. But it’s fair to say it worked out better than we thought it would, or even dreamed it would. Give us an hour and we’ll make it weird, I guess. And balloon animals make people happy.”

I am warned off asking about Reading, which seems fair enough, since nobody wants their defining moment to be a urinary bombardment (although by all accounts, Daphne – real name, Karen DiConcetto – sees it as a career high watermark). But Celeste warms to the idea that the UK, generally, “gets” D&C’s eccentricities in a way that their home country does not, and is particularly pleased when I compare Song to a Succulent to Kate Bush. “I can take that,” she says. The new record has won them praise from the likes of indie pop veteran Helen Love (“The most punk rock record of the year”) and Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos (“It’s ace”).

So now that they are definitely back, where next for Daphne & Celeste? “I don’t know,” she says. “Come back in 18 years and ask me.”